BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A member of the International Joint Commission maintains that blame sent their way for months of high water levels and flooding along Lake Ontario is misplaced.

"The rains came and they came off the charts of anything that had been seen in the past,” said Lana Pollock, the United States chairperson for the International Joint Commission, “and there is no engineering that could be done or could have been done that could handle the water and make it go away."

Pollock was appointed to the IJC by President Barack Obama in 2010. Six years later, the IJC enacted new regulations for Lake Ontario. Plan 2017 was the culmination of 16 years of study of the lakes.

"You can't just manage Lake Ontario, or any of the Great Lakes, like I manage the water in my sink at home,” said Pollock. “It's big. It's big."

For months now, and as recently as Wednesday when Greece Town Supervisor Bill Reilich met with Vice President Mike Pence, state and local leaders have called on the administration to make a change to plan 2014 and the IJC staffing.

"You learn to live with it and you try to anticipate it and we will try to work with people to understand that,” Pollock said.

Pollock says the best way to be prepared is to study this event as they have floods in the past.

"The people who are being most unfair are those who offer excuses rather than science,” said Pollock, “and somehow say that if you change the people who are sitting on this commission, in the next flood, they wouldn't suffer."